AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--DECEMBER 2023--BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ

Researching this complex and fascinating man turned into one of those rabbit-hole experiences for me….so many interviews to read, so many moments that made me wish I could sit down and talk with him rather than just reading about him. In many of the photos of Sáenz available on-line, he is smiling in a big way.

Sáenz was born in New Mexico, and spent much of his childhood on a small family farm. When his parents lost that farm in the 1960s, he began his own working life doing odd jobs to help support his six siblings. He did not drop out of school, however, entering a seminary after high school, and ultimately studying theology in Belgium. He entered the priesthood and served a parish in El Paso, Texas, for a few years, but left his religious order to pursue writing. Having obtained an M.A. in creative writing, his first published works were poetry collections. He has also written children’s books, YA novels, adult novels and short fiction, winning numerous literary awards including the PEN/Faulkner award for Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club and the American Book Award in 1992 for his first book of poetry, Calendar of Dust.

Despite a troubled past, Sáenz has a positive outlook on life. He spoke of this in one interview, saying "My vision of life is just this side of tragic. But I think I’m much more optimistic about life than my stories suggest…I can’t conceive of a world without hope...Despair is unacceptable. Everyone should reread Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech."

Although none of his official bios note this specifically, he has made reference in interviews to being sexually abused by a family member as a child, so he grew up confused and frightened by his own sexuality. He was well into his 50s before he addressed this issue, but after being married to a woman he says he adored for what he describes as 15 "happy, devoted years", Sáenz came out as gay. His two very popular Dante and Aristotle YA novels envision a healthier, happier and earlier discovery for his adolescent protagonists. First, they become friends, which is a fine way to fall in love. Sáenz places great value on friendship, mentioning its importance and strength in most of his interviews. "To be a friend is to hold an office." "Friend is a holy word".

Sáenz currently lives and teaches "on the border", both geographically and philosophically, teaching at the University of Texas, El Paso, in the only bilingual creative writing program in the US. While he acknowledges the many dualities in his work---English/Spanish, dark/light, gay/straight, truth/lies, sacred/profane, Mexican/American-- he also asserts that there is deeper importance in his border stories: "I believe that a writer’s job is to bear witness, and I want to bear witness that the border is not just a fucking metaphor, that we are people. And I want people to see us. When I create characters, they feel real, and they’re Mexicans."

He is not alone is assessing his own work this way. Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country, has said: "Ben Sáenz’s vivid imagination captures all that is beautiful, agonizing and redemptive in the crossings we make through borders of geography and culture. But it is in the interior journeys of the psyche and the soul that we must find salvation; Sáenz’s brilliant prose penetrates to that core and he finds and exposes that truth. A reader can ask for no more than this: to be spellbound by a story, and to come to the last page with a sense of having been being changed and allowed to carry something of it away."

Sáenz paints, as well as writes. His website includes a virtual gallery of his work. While he feels that he succeeds better with words than with paint, he says there are times when he must set aside the writing, when it becomes too much. "I turn to art that is wordless and forces me to communicate in other ways. Painting gave me a form of communication that writing could never give me. And I get to listen to music when I paint."

I will be reading The inexplicable logic of my life for this challenge. I have never read any of Mr Saenz's work, so I am up to give it a try!

Having surfed, I may give a miss as I don't really do YA. I'm wavering in clicking for the one volume of poetry available, but I'll read here with interest and see if I'm woo'd across the line.

After finding Mr. Saenz a few years ago, as with Ivan Doig, I read straight through nearly all his books.

Favorites include:

In Perfect Light 5 stars
Names on a Map 5
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life 5
Carry Me Like Water 3
Everything Ends at The Kentucky Club 3.5
He Forgot to Say Goodbye 3

For YA:
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe 5
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World 4

Completed Everything Begins and ends at the Kentucky Club. A series of short stories mostly coming of age for young men. The setting is a border town. A lot of times short stories are sometimes just too short but these mostly were pretty good for short stories.

>5 Kristelh: I just received that one the other day. I'm not sure whether I'll get to it this month, but I am looking forward to reading something of his that isn't YA.

I have almost finished The Inexplicable Logic of My Life and have enjoyed it. It is YA fiction but well done and clearly someone familiar with and in sympathy with the subject matter of the book.
I sense much of Saenz's personal experiences are poured into the 450 pages of the story.

>7 PaulCranswick: Yes, Paul, I thought so too. His bio information is interesting.

>7 PaulCranswick: I also enjoyed that one earlier this month, Paul. I agree - I think the book is very autobiographical. I ended up giving it 4.5 stars, I enjoyed it so much.

I read a few poems from Saenz's collection Elegies in Blue this month. The ones I read were very good but also a little beyond the bandwidth I had to give this December. I may dip back into it someday, although I have several novels of his here that are higher on my list. I've read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe before (twice, I think) and thought it was great.

>7 PaulCranswick:, >8 Kristelh:, >9 alcottacre: Having read rather a lot of Sáenz's biographical info in preparation for this month, and having said I'd like to move on from his YA work, I think I'll give that one a pass. >10 lycomayflower: I do think I might have to sample his poetry eventually.